Haze by Andrea Wolfe (korean novels in english .TXT) 📗

Jack texted me about an hour later to inform me that he was going to be pulling an all-nighter and that we'd just have to talk tomorrow. A part of me was secretly happy that I wouldn't hear his voice, wouldn't have it as an overwhelming influence in my endless stream of deep thoughts. I had no thoughts of jealousy, no worries regarding him and Lexy.

Honestly, I didn't know whose side I belonged on. Everybody had pluses and minuses, upsides and downsides. I didn't want to lose my job and I didn't want to lose Jack. I didn't know how much longer I'd be able to cope with Sam's aggressiveness or if it would get worse and just push me over the edge. Allowing that to happen would almost be more of a passive approach, and inaction sure sounded nice.

I was feeling so malleable, so susceptible to influence it almost made me sick.

Sam had been so nice leading up to this deal, and if I tried to see this from his perspective, I needed to cut him some slack. If what he said about his wife was true, I could see why he'd get stressed out about these sorts of things, especially if the label was counting on him to pull the strings and secure the deal. He was carrying an enormous amount of weight on his shoulders, and he couldn't do anything about it until Jack acted.

I knew my mom and dad would be disappointed if I lost this job, not that their opinion dictated much in my life anymore. Still, it had been my dad that had urged me to come here, urged me to try and make my own way in this gigantic, fast-moving city that I really knew so little about.

Things were racing so fast with Jack, so blazingly quick that it genuinely seemed like a blur. I was feeling things toward him that I hadn't felt after years with Timothy. It was like a separation of the men from the boys (I think people still say that), black and white, night and day. Jack was something special, no doubt. Did special translate to reliable, though? That wasn't clear.

If reliability meant money, then Jack was definitely reliable. That was a really simple definition, however. If reliability meant straightforward and predictable, Jack definitely wasn't reliable.

If I lost the job, I was stranded here. If I couldn't find a job quickly, I'd be begging my parents for money, worried that I was going to get Jesse and me booted out of the apartment. I'd probably still have Jack—well, unless I broke it off for whatever reason—but I would hate to ask him for any help. In fact, I probably wouldn't even be able to do it. My lips would go numb and I'd be unable to speak the words.

Digging myself into my own hole was just going to require my own efforts to get out of it. The idea of a quick fix like Jack's money just felt cheap, but I wasn't entirely sure why.

The more I thought about it, the more I believed that I was just moving too fast with Jack and needed to slow down by a couple of notches and re-analyze the situation.

I didn't want to end things with him—no way—but I did want to wait out the storm of this record label decision. I couldn't help but think of it as a hurricane approaching the shore, one that would bring all sorts of devastation with it—well, if he didn't sign with MCI.

Without the situation at work, I knew I never would have slowed down. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, right?

Infatuation. Obsession. These words came to mind when I thought about Jack and myself. I was feeling so much, and although every fucking beautiful feeling was probably entirely true, there was still that distinct possibility that it was just something that would pass. In a couple months, he'd get bored and start sleeping around and I'd be nothing, a disposable girl that was used up and ready to spend some time breaking down in a landfill.

Why the hell are you being so ridiculous, Effie? Jack had been nothing but sensitive and honest with me, inviting me along when he shared his deepest, darkest secrets. The way he touched me, the way he talked to me. The way I had begged him to forgo the condom and then panicked. Something like magic went on between us, something that made me feel safe and protected from everything, even if I wasn't. Was that feeling worth something?

Ignorance is bliss, right?

I continued to dig, continued to follow the light as if I were trapped in a cave underground. A job was a job. I did the work and was compensated for it. If I didn't fuck it up, it would still be around in a month or two, maybe even in years. It was dependable right now.

So was Jack, but I needed to test myself, needed to test just how necessary this all was. I did value my job, unfortunately, so I had to put that first, at least until I sorted some of this out. It hadn't even been two weeks and I was basically head-over-heels for this guy. We had been spending so much time together that it was a huge letdown just to have a night off tonight. That was embarrassing for some reason.

Jack was internationally famous and in demand. It's not like we wouldn't spend nights apart now and then...

Maybe I was a little masochistic, but I just needed to breathe, to push Jack one step away from me so I could get a better look at the whole picture. It felt kind of like pushing a square peg into a round hole, but sensible for some strange reason. He might flee and that would mean the end of a potentially life-long beautiful thing.

God, I was being so overdramatic and overly serious. Or maybe I wasn't. I couldn't decide—and that was scary